- Publisher: Santa Ragione
- Release Date: Dec 2, 2025
- Summary: An enigmatic first person horror adventure that blurs the line between reality and the darkest corners of your imagination. Fourteen days, a horse farm, and a few rules to follow.
- Developer: Santa Ragione, Andrea Lucco Borlera
- Genre(s): Adventure, 3D, First-Person
- # of players: No Online Multiplayer
- Cheats: On GameFAQs
- More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
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Positive: 8 out of 14
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Mixed: 6 out of 14
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Negative: 0 out of 14
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Dec 2, 2025And, indeed, the skuzzy and harrowing Horses gains much of its power through its linearity, shepherding you through your own complicity in a cycle of dehumanization with scarcely an option to offer a word of protest. The lack of meaningful choice makes the very act of playing the game feel practically unbearable, what with players themselves being led forward like animals.
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Dec 2, 2025Horses is an important video game that aims to scandalize by working within the uncomfortable space typical of provocative art. It has no intention of being harmless: it wants to unsettle you on every level. It is a reflection on the banality of evil, on the anarchy of power, and on how dehumanizing others pushes us to commit atrocious actions. While it evokes the horrors of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, it is a highly contemporary work that stages mechanisms power still exploits to undermine our humanity. It is a video game that does not seek approval and has the courage to remind us how easy it still is, even today, to simply follow orders.
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Dec 11, 2025Horses is a minimalist first-person narrative adventure that moves with precision through the realm of the uncanny, drawing on the unsettling atmosphere of folk horror. Blending the language of video games with cinematic grammar and touches of grotesque and subtle horror, it delivers a bold and meaningful story about capitalist exploitation and class awareness. Despite its modest scale, Horses turns its limitations into style, offering a haunting, socially charged experience that feels as cinematic as it is interactive.
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Dec 2, 2025Disturbing and outside of any canon: horses is a journey into the loss of innocence.
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Edge MagazineDec 24, 2025Horses is a fascinating work, capable of moments that lodge in the memory, such as the late-game sequence when the projector's whirring finally stops and the tired clomp of footsteps registers to our ears like the sound of freedom. [Issue#419, p.122]
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Dec 19, 2025Much of HORSES' notoriety stems from its 'forbidden' status, but beneath the controversy lies a valid, experimental narrative for adult audiences. It is a worthwhile provocation for those seeking something off-beat, succeeding as an uncomfortable and fleeting audiovisual piece.
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Dec 14, 2025It’s not particularly effective at what it sets out to do. It is certainly a harrowing and memorable experience I won’t soon forget, and a standout in 2025 for its imagery alone, but not one destined for the limelight outside of the controversy. It’s ironic that a game tackling the hypocrisy of purity culture and dehumanization of “deviants” would end up in such people’s targets after the initial ban, but reality is stranger than fiction. Horses deserves to be played, but at times feels like a shock-value PETA game that tackles its tougher topics with the subtlety of a jackhammer. To hinge a studio’s success on this game would be risky even if it was on Steam, but I still hope that, to paraphrase the financier’s daughter in Horses, the people at Santa Ragione get to live the rest of their lives as game developers.